


I heard the warnings | But I still wanted to try

by Mattition



Series: The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does. [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (light), Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Sugar Daddy, Anxiety Attacks, M/M, Manipulation, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:54:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27770092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattition/pseuds/Mattition
Summary: Elias is calling him ‘darling boy’ again, which he usually only says when he’s extraordinarily pleased. Jon wonders what he’s done to deserve it, but his tired brain can’t keep ahold of the thought and it slips past him before he can examine it too closely.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does. [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043436
Comments: 16
Kudos: 85





	I heard the warnings | But I still wanted to try

**Author's Note:**

> CW: this fic includes a graphic depiction of a panic attack caused by an argument! If that's triggering, pls skip this one! Also includes cursing, mentions of sex and of Elias-typical manipulation.
> 
> This is a weird mix of vent and my fetish for Elias being a bad person on Jon.  
> //shrug idk what this is lmao someone convince me to write more of this

Elias calls while he’s at Georgie’s flat, studying. He rushes to answer it, frantically checking the time. Elias likes him to be home by 10 at the latest, he wants to make sure Jon’s getting a full night’s rest, which is considerate of him. He’s not missed curfew yet, but he only has an hour to get back to Elias’ penthouse. 

“Hello?”

“Jon. Where are you.” Jon gives him Georgie’s address, trying to ignore the squint she levels at him. Elias makes an annoyed noise. “I’ll be there in 30 minutes. We’ll have a talk about your wandering,”

“Y-yes, sir,” Jon stutters out, regrets it when Georgie _frowns_. Elias hangs up, and Jon begins packing up his supplies. Elias will like it better if he’s ready and waiting for him. 

“What—Jon, is everything alright?”

“Yeah, that was my, er, my. I have to go?” His hands are determinately not shaking, but he’s rattled by the sudden realization that Elias may be mad at him for hanging out with Georgie after she’d come onto him last month. Especially in her own house. Should he have made sure they met in public? Or maybe he should have told Elias that their project had to be done face to face like this; Elias probably would have had a solution. He knows better than to hide things from Elias, not like it was quite possible, but somehow, he’s still dumb enough to try.

Georgie is still frowning.

“Was it that—guy?” she asks, derisive. “Your _benefactor_?”

“He has a name, you know,” Jon rebuts, zipping up his rucksack. It’s a beat-up old thing, one of the few that Elias had let him keep when he’d overhauled Jon’s wardrobe to better suit his impeccable tastes. Jon’s not sure why he’s so attached to the grungy bag, but he’d begged Elias to let him have it, and Elias had given him a little kiss in reward for his tears and let him keep it. Elias likes it when he cries.

“He’s a creep.” She says, voice growing in volume and insistence. His shoulders hike up a bit as he edges away from her. Even if her neighborhood isn’t the best, he’d rather take his chances out on the street if she’s just going to yell at him. 

“You don’t know him,” he mutters.

“Do _you_ know him? He’s like 35!”

“Fucking—okay? What of it?”

“Jon, you’re 19. Even you must know how predatory this is.” She comes around the kitchen table they were sharing as desk space. She’s blocking the way to leave. Jon’s not sure if it’s on purpose, but it puts him further on edge.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Just that you’re not great at reading people.” Jon splutters angrily. “What does he even get out of this? I thought you were ace,”

“I am!” He is. It’s what he’d told her, among his other nervous babbling, when he was trying to tell her they wouldn’t work. Not that he thinks they could never work, but that would be a different world. In this one, he has Elias, who loves him. 

“So, what? Rich white guy just wants to keep you as his pet? Buy you clothes and expensive electronics for nothing in exchange?” 

It stings. He tries to keep himself in a state of cautious optimism that even if Elias didn’t like his body, that he’d like his company enough to keep him around. The idea that Elias only wants to have him as a fucktoy has volleyed around his head, but Elias is pretty much a mind reader, and he’s assured Jon that there’s something special to him. That Elias’ god likes him in some way, and that makes Elias like him that much more. Elias had even encouraged him to try and find some forums for other ‘sugar babies’ and make some friends of like experiences. Jon had, and he felt a lot better about the whole situation. It had showed him just how much Elias did care about him. He _really_ doesn’t like that Georgie’s trying to cast doubt on the only person in his whole life who’s ever loved him. 

“I don’t have to tell you what my life is like, Georgina, get out of my way,” Georgie moves her considerate bulk further into his path and sets her feet. She has this look on her face, determined and stalwart. She’s prepared to win this argument and she’s prepared to make her point physical if needs be. It reminds him viscerally of a certain childhood bully who liked forcing Jon to agree with him by any means necessary. He swallows. Would Georgie hit him?

“I want to make sure you’re safe, Jon, this guy skeeves me out.”

“Well, good thing he doesn’t want to fuck you, then, isn’t it?” Jon, though he doesn’t seem like it, is extremely self-aware. He knows all of his coping mechanisms, though he has a hard time controlling them, and he knows that the tried and true is combating his own fear with spite. That doesn’t mean he’s any less annoyed at himself for doing it. 

“So he’s fucking you? Does he know you’re ace?”

“It doesn’t make me incapable of sex!” Her hang-up on his sexuality is just ratcheting up his anxiety about the situation. He’s suddenly terrified by it. Elias had wondered out loud what would have happened if Jon hadn’t contacted him that day Georgie tried to make a move on him. Would she have tried to coerce him into it? He knows that most people only want the one thing. 

“You need to learn to set boundaries,” she commands.

Boundaries? It’s such a foreign concept, coming from her. He’s never had boundaries. And certainly not with her. It’s so entirely absurd, he can’t help but huff out a laugh.

And Then he can’t stop laughing.

It’s like his chest is full of pop rocks, and the fizzing, excited feelings should be good and should make him happy but it just _hurts_ and he tries to make some noise through the choking laughs and it comes out as a sob and then he’s crying and the sobs don’t stop and the laughs won’t stop either, and he has to press both hands over his mouth to quiet the sound or he’s afraid he’ll die . He bends over at the waist, a perfect right angle, as he convulses with sobbing laughter and pinches his nose closed and squeezes his eyes closed.

It’s a trick to cope he learned when he was about 14; if there’s no air in there, then his brain will focus on things other than the pleasure of panicked circling. She makes a concerned noise, just outside of his periphery, and there is a hand, heavy and hot and holding him down, on the back of his neck. A high keen breaks it’s way through his chest, jolted around on it’s way out by the laughter he still can’t stop. He reluctantly pulls his hands away from his mouth to bat away hers, as it is pushing him down through the crust of the earth, and he doesn’t want to be buried alive. He stumbles away, trips and nearly brains himself on the coffee table, and scrambles towards the nearest wall. Her apartment is one of those open-concept ones, but the kitchen is separated from the living space with an island that has a bar on one side.

He ends up curled up between two bar stools, back to the wall, clutching his knees and hugging himself in a futile effort to keep his body together. His chest is still convulsing slightly, but he has quieted down, the feedback loop is no longer as exciting to his useless brain. She is staring at him. He clamps his teeth down on the flesh of his shoulder and bites as hard as he can. It sends frantic jolts of pain up to his brain, which makes the laughter finally, blessedly stop. He’s still crying, of course, but these days, it feels like he’s crying every other moment he has alone, stressed tears and little fits a better man, one who wasn’t such a useless child, could hold back, or wouldn’t need because he wouldn’t have been in this situation at all. And look at him, pathetic thing, curled up like a frightened rabbit because someone dared to point out the truths he was avoiding. And here he is, making it all about him again, bloody wanker, always vying for attention and crying all over the place and making a scene, no wonder the Elias’ strange god likes him so much, it wants a show, and he’s a three-act play every time someone gets a little snippy. Useless idiot. Can’t even handles some light, _deserved_ criticism. And not even about him. Selfish fuck. He should probably just do the right thing and off himself; he has concrete evidence that the world would be a better place without him, even. He’s just too self-absorbed to do it. He bites down harder on his arm. She makes a noise, somewhere far away, like her apartment stretched somehow, and now he’s kilometers away from her, and indeed, the rest of the room. He wonders how she pays rent on a flat 15 kilometers wide and another delirious giggle works its way through his cracks. He bites harder. He doesn’t feel it. That’s nice. He can just float out here in his cozy, familiar sea of self-recrimination and his stupid, broken, defective body can stay there and rot for all he cares. There is an annoying drone. It is steady, and distant, and won’t let him float. It is an anchor, and he is being pulled to the bottom. It is a harpoon, and he is being reeled back in.

He comes back to his body. It is not sudden, for all that it feels like it is. His jaw hurts. He mechanically unclamps it from his arm. His arm hurts, too. And now that he’s thinking about it, his whole body hurts. The joints in his legs are screaming and he slowly, painfully, uncurls himself. Georgie is sitting next to him on the floor, telling him a story about something the Admiral did the other day. She is speaking calmly, not too loud, but certainly loud enough to break through his fog. He stares at her. She looks back, steadily.

“Sorry,” he rasps, and her face twitches, like she wants to frown but is afraid of sending him on another spiral. 

“You don’t have to apologize for having a panic attack, Jonathan.” This, at least, is familiar territory. He knows what she wants from this interaction, so he nods, and doesn’t try to apologize again. She sighs. She’s disappointed in him, of course. Maybe she did want him to seek further forgiveness. He’d forgotten the distance between them, idiot, he shouldn’t presume to know her mind. He sticks his tongue between his teeth. He doesn’t bite down, but the threat of pain is comforting. “I just—” she says. “I just want you to start making decisions that aren’t going to hurt you.”

“Okay,”

“I think you’re important,”

“Thank. You.” He grits it out. She starts to say something, but his phone rings again. He digs it out of his pocket with stiff limbs. Mechanically presses the little green phone button and holds it to his ear. Elias’ voice comes down the line, comforting in its familiarity and soothing in its smooth smugness.

“Jon, darling, come downstairs. We’ll go home, and I’ll make you that hot chocolate you like.” Having the order is comforting. He nods, and woodenly heaves himself to his feet, phone still pressed to his ear. He takes a hesitant step towards the door, half afraid Georgie won’t let him leave. She doesn’t move. She’s just sitting there on the floor next to the spot where he was curled up, watching him. Elias’ voice sounds in his ear again. “Don’t forget your coat and bag, darling boy, you won’t be coming back and we wouldn’t want you to loose them.” Jon gathers his rucksack from the floor and takes his jacket off of the hook in the entryway. He mumbles a goodbye to Georgie and fumbles her front door open. He turns toward the stair well. 

When he next blinks, he’s standing in front of her building, and Elias is guiding him towards his car, calling him ‘darling boy’ again, which he usually only says when he’s extraordinarily pleased. Jon wonders what he’s done to deserve it, but his tired brain can’t keep ahold of the thought and it slips past him before he can examine it too closely. It’s been a while since he’s had a panic attack that bad, and he’s absolutely worn out. Elias hands him into the passenger seat and buckles him in like a child. When Elias is sat in the driver’s seat, he leans across the center console, puts his hand on Jon’s thigh. Squeezes. He presses a kiss to Jon’s forehead. 

“I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself, darling boy. My good boy,” he coos. Jon can’t suppress a whine. “Let’s get you home; much to do.” He kisses Jon’s mouth, an indulgent thing that Jon barely has the energy to reciprocate. Elias doesn’t mind that much. He’d once said that his favorite version of Jon was the wrecked, exhausted version of him after an intense scene. Maybe he had been exaggerating a bit, but Jon doesn’t feel bad about the kiss at any rate. And, judging by Elias’ smug smile, he’s quite chuffed with the state of things.

Jon’s so glad that Elias is always there for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Joseph Solomon's [ The Ocean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TowLqs-eEdU)
> 
> for ppl who care: I promise i will update EoR but semester's ending and I'm NOT vibing so catch me in mid december lol
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> If you want more of my rambling, you can find me on nsfw twitter @maatition


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